Episode 169. I Can't Get My Team On The Same Page...Here's Where to Start

You’ve had the meetings. Repeated yourself. Retrained people. Sent the Slack messages. And somehow it still feels like you’re the only one rowing the boat.

If you’ve ever said, "I can’t get my team on the same page," this episode is for you. 

Before you can get people to follow, there’s one important question most office managers never stop to ask: What page are we actually trying to get on?

HEY THERE! LET'S CONNECT...I'D LOVE TO GET TO KNOW YOU BETTER!

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Transcript

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Well, hello and welcome back to the podcast. I want to start with a question. I just love starting with questions. Have you ever pushed your chair back from your desk in your dental practice and ask, how am I the only person who seems to care about what's happening around here? You arrived at the practice this morning early. Maybe now it's 8.05. The huddle was supposed to start at 8. One assistant is still getting coffee. Someone else is smearing peanut butter on a rice cake. Somehow four patients didn't get confirmed. The hygienist is irritated because her room isn't stocked. The doctor is already asking random questions. And there you are trying to hold the whole thing together with a smile on your face. While inside you're wondering if everybody around you has lost their ever-loving minds. If you have ever thought, I just can't get my team on the same page, this episode is for you. So let's get started. Welcome to the Dental Life Podcast, where we explore how you can have both a successful career and a meaningful personal life in and outside of your practices without sacrificing one for the other. I'm your host, Beth Hylman, former dental office manager, Turn Certified Life and Health Coach, and I'm here to help you navigate the challenges and opportunities that come from being a dental professional. Let's get started. Welcome back to the podcast. And listen, my friends, this is a good one today. Before we go any further, let me tell you something. If you struggle to get your team on the same page, you are not the only office manager who feels that way. Not even close. I've heard this complaint hundreds of times. I've said it myself probably hundreds of times. And honestly, sometimes there really is a team problem. Sometimes people aren't pulling their weight. Sometimes there is drama. Sometimes there are attitude problems. Sometimes there are people who seem committed to doing things the hard way. I'm not here to pretend those things don't exist. But today I want to look at this from a different angle. Because what if the issue isn't that your team isn't on the same page? What if nobody ever defined the page in the first place? And before you panic, no, this is not going to turn into one of those episodes where I tell you everything is your fault. I hate those episodes. No use in those. Instead, I want us to have the kind of conversation I wish someone had had with me years ago because it would have saved me a lot of frustration. A lot. When office managers tell me they want everyone on the same page, here's what they usually mean. They mean I want people to show up on time. I want them to stop rolling their eyes every time we implement a change. I want them to own their mistakes. I want them to stop talking about each other and start talking to each other. I want them to care about the patients. I want them to stop acting like this is just a paycheck. And those are all reasonable things. I would want those things too. But here's the question. If a brand new employee walked into your practice tomorrow and asked the question, what does a great team member look like here? Could you answer them? Not in your head, out loud. Maybe even be able to write it on a piece of paper. Could you clearly explain what matters, what doesn't, what behavior gets celebrated, what behavior isn't acceptable? What kind of culture are you trying to build? Because here's what I've noticed. Most office managers know exactly what they don't want, but they're less clear about what they do want. We know we don't want gossip, we don't want negativity, we don't want laziness, we don't want drama. But what if I asked, what do you want? A lot of people would have to stop and think, and that is totally okay. Nobody teaches us this stuff. Most office managers didn't wake up one day and just decide to pursue this illustrious career in leadership. Some of you may have gotten promoted because you were dependable. You could figure things out, you could handle problems. You cared. You became the person everybody came to. And then suddenly one day someone says, Congratulations, you're now the office manager. Which sounds exciting until you realize there was no training manual attached to that. Nobody handed you a guide called, Here's How to Lead People. Instead, you got the keys and a whole bunch of responsibility. And then everybody wonders why leadership feels so hard. I remember seasons as an office manager where I truly believed my biggest problem was my team. If I could just get the right people, if I could just get them to listen, if I could get everybody to care as much as I did, if I could just get them to remember to check out all the services they did that day. It's right there on the computer. All you have to do is click the box. And isn't asking too much to bring a good attitude with you once in a while. If I could just get them to do that, then everything would be better. Does that sound familiar? What I eventually realized was I was spending an enormous amount of energy trying to manage other people. And I spent very little energy learning how to lead myself. The funny thing is, I thought I was leading. I read all the books, listened to the podcasts, went to all the CE classes, heard all that leadership advice. Leaders go last. Don't ask people to do something you wouldn't do yourself. Lead by example. Those ideas sound great on paper, but what I turned them into was doing everything myself. I stayed late. I covered for people, fixed mistakes nobody knew I was fixing, carried things that were never mine to carry. And the one that really got me, I would just say, forget it, I'll do it myself, because nobody could do it as well as I could. I thought that made me a great leader. Looking back, it made me a great bottleneck. Everything had to go through me. Everything depended on me. And eventually I became the thing I was frustrated about. And that wasn't fun to admit, but I'm gonna tell you something. It was extremely freeing because suddenly I wasn't stuck waiting for everybody else to change. I could actually do something, and that's where I think a lot of office managers get trapped. We spend years trying to get people to follow us instead of becoming someone worth following. Now, before that sounds harsh, stick with me. I'm not talking about being perfect. Lord knows I wasn't. I'm talking about being intentional. For example, when something goes wrong, do you go through the team or around them? Do you trust them with responsibility or quietly take everything back because it's just faster if you do? When someone does something well, do you notice or do you only notice mistakes? Do people know what you are trying to build? Or do they mostly know what irritates you? These aren't gotcha questions. They are normal human questions. Because people don't follow perfection, they follow clarity, they follow consistency, they follow people they trust. And here's the part of this episode that might feel a little uncomfortable, not because you're doing anything wrong, but because it's worth looking at. Sure, every single day I was at that huddle early, every day. But what I wasn't on time for, maybe during the day, was a consultation. I would try to squeeze in a couple more things before I seated that patient. Did I let that hygiene patient hang around and chat with me at the front desk instead of being available for the doctor's patient to check out on time? Guilty. And I dang sure didn't leave on time. I was usually the last to leave. Listen, all that counts when you talk about being timely. It's not just about showing up for the huddle on time. And here's another example. If positivity matters, what experience are the team having of you when things get stressful? If accountability matters, how do you handle mistakes when they are yours? If direct communication matters, how do you handle conflict? Do you address it? Do you vent about it? Avoid it? Again, no judgment here. I've done all of that. Every single one. But I learned something important. You cannot consistently lead people somewhere you aren't willing to go yourself. And that's true whether you're talking about accountability, communication, professionalism, or culture. Your team watches what you do far more than they listen to what you say. That's just human nature. And let's talk about something else that doesn't get talked about enough. Some of you inherited a culture you didn't create. You walked into a practice where the habits were already there, the drama was there, the gossip was there, the resistance already there. You inherited a mess you didn't make, and now you're trying to improve it. That's hard, really hard. Sometimes office managers feel guilty because they haven't fixed everything on the second day. But maybe fixing everything was never your job. Maybe your job is to start creating something different. One conversation at a time, one expectation at a time, one example at a time, one decision at a time. Culture doesn't change because you announce it at a team meeting. Culture changes because people experience it repeatedly. So let me ask you a question. What if for the next six months you just stopped trying to fix your team? What if instead you focused on becoming the leader you would want to work for? Seriously. Sit with that. What if for six months you stopped obsessing over everyone else's growth and became deeply committed to your own? Not because you're broken, not because you're failing, because that's where your power actually is. What would happen if you got crystal clear about this page you wanted everyone to get on? What does a great day look like in your practice? What does a great team member look like? What do you stand for? What won't you tolerate? Can you write all that down? Can you describe that in great detail? Because if you can't, it's really hard to lead people toward that. What if you spent the next month intentionally catching people doing things right? Not this fake praise, no participation trophies, real observations. I noticed you stayed late to help somebody do this. I noticed how you handled that patient. I noticed the way you supported your teammate. People grow where attention goes. Now, our brains aren't wired to do that. They're wired to find out what's wrong. They're looking for it. It's just the way they are because they want to keep us out of danger. But that's just going to keep you stuck and not moving toward where you want to go. What if you finally had that conversation you've been avoiding? You know the one. The conversation that's been living rent-free in your head for three months, the one you've rehearsed in the shower, the one you've replayed during your commute. Leadership grows every time you stop avoiding something and start addressing it. What if you sat down with each team member and said, What's one thing that would make your job easier? Now, don't say what's one thing I could do to make your job easier. That's not the point here. What's one thing that would make your job easier? Ask them and then listen. Don't defend, don't explain, just listen. You'd be amazed at what you would learn. And what if you stop trying to figure all of this out alone? Because honestly, that's where I see a lot of office managers struggle. They're carrying the weight of leadership by themselves. No mentor, no peer group, no safe place where you can talk honestly, no room where people actually understand what you're dealing with. And eventually that gets heavy, like really heavy. Here's what I know. Six months from now, you might have the exact same team, but a completely different experience leading them. Maybe some people leave, and for the first time, it doesn't feel like failure. It feels like clarity. Because when you're clear about what this page looks like, when you're clear about who you are, you're clear about where you're going. And when that happens, the right people tend to move closer. The wrong people tend to move away. That's not failure, that's alignment. So let's come back to where we started. I just can't get my team on the same page. Maybe that's true, but maybe the better question is: what page are we actually trying to get on? Am I on that page? Not perfectly, just honestly, because the most powerful leadership question is not why won't they follow me? The most powerful leadership question is, would I want to work for me? Would I follow me? That is a brave question to ask. It's also the question that can change everything. I hope this episode feels like I'm sitting across the table having a cup of coffee with you, because I have been there. I know what it's like to care deeply, to carry too much, to wonder if you're the problem, and to feel completely alone in that responsibility. But hear me when I say this: you are not alone, not even close. And if you're an office manager who wants more conversations like this, stay tuned. I've got something exciting coming out later this fall, I think you're going to be really excited about. Come follow me on Instagram and Facebook because I'll be sharing more about it there and on these episodes. But until then, keep showing up, keep learning, keep growing. And remember, the goal isn't to get everyone on the same page. The goal is to become so clear about what that page looks like that the right people naturally move toward it. And look, don't forget to join me in my Facebook group, Beyond Dental Burnout. We're going to keep the conversation going over there. In the meantime, have a fabulous week. I'll see you in next week's episode and in the Facebook group. Hey, have you had a chance to download your free copy of my mental hygiene checklist yet? Visit Beth HeilmanCoaching.com to get your copy. It teaches you the practical skills you need to achieve the same level of excellent mental hygiene as your dental hygiene. Don't miss out on this valuable resource for both your personal and professional growth.